


Fem Bi Dean Winchester: The Lana Del Rey Prose Album

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Inspired by Music, Other, Post-Series, Pre-Series, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 08:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2221683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of character drabbles that focuses on Dean Winchester both pre and post series. Fem!bi!Dean always.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fordham Road

There once was a little boy who spent his time in the graveyard after school, headstone at his back. People would see him, small batman backpack slung over his shoulder, walking home alone from school, and maybe they said, _where’s this boy’s father isn’t he a little young to be walking home all by himself_ , and if someone was there who overheard, they might have said back, _his father’s wife just died and he’s grieving, poor soul_. They clucked their tongues. _Gosh, what happened_. They poured tall glasses of iced tea, wedged with lemon, and settled into their wicker chairs on the porch, just cleaned of leaves. _A fire. A great fire. Hardly anything left. Such a shame, such a damn shame_. Their glasses empty, their plates clean save for crumbs of day old coffee cake. _Here, let me help you with that_.

They bustled into their cool houses as the boy walked home—not home-home since that home was gone—but he’d always stop in the graveyard, the one just off Fordham road, small little face turned up towards the statue of Mary standing near the entrance, her arms outstretched in blessing before shaking his head and finding the fresh-dug grave.

His mother’s name had been Mary, the whispers said.

The boy’s name was Dean, the whispers said.

And he hadn’t spoken a word since his mother died.

Dean sat beside her, the breeze in his hair, homework undone in his bag. Sometimes, he stretched out in the green grass, little rashes itching across his skin as the sun shone on his face, peppering his nose and cheek and neck with golden freckles. 

The boy’s father sometimes came for him—smelling of drink sometimes, cigarette smoke other times. He grabbed Dean’s arm, rough, told him to come back to the house, that he couldn’t keep an eye on both him and Sammy, and to look after his little brother while he took care of grown up business. 

Dean never said anything, but he’d look back over his shoulder at the graveyard, at the statue of Mary, wet from the shower storm a few hours before, rain streaking down the stone.

One day, when it was hot, he found a dollar on the street and he bought a cola from the corner gas station. The can was big in his little fists but he brought it with him to the graveyard, sipping it quietly over her grave until the sky turned red as the sun went down and he picked up his bags and left, tucking the empty can in his backpack. 

And then the day came that the boy’s father packed their bags and stowed it in the trunk of their sleek impala, Dean in the back seat with the baby, and they drove out of Lawrence down Fordham Road past the graveyard, and Dean pressed his hand against the glass, looking back towards the town and the graves and what was left of his mother growing smaller and smaller through the rear view window.

When Dean came back, older now and grown, Fordham Road had a few more potholes and the Mary was still standing, though the stone was beginning to crumble. He’d told Sam that he didn’t want to come, that he hadn’t wanted to come and see Mom’s grave and it didn’t matter that he was talking again because people still weren’t listening because here they were. 

Dean came back a third time—a third time on his motorcycle, when his hair was grey, red mark on his arm. A third time dressed in clothes that didn’t smell like dad. A third time listening to music from his pink media player. A third time without the shadow of his father over him or Sam beside him.

He glanced up at the Mary, face worn smooth away from the winds and the rains and the sun before he went and found the headstone with his mother’s name carved on the front.

He didn’t lie beside the grave like he had when he was a child, and he didn’t stand to the side like he did when he was a young man. He knelt beside it, hands clasped in front of his chest, and maybe there were tears in his eyes when he said, “I did it, Mom.” He pressed his fingers to his mouth, kissing the tips, and then touched his mother’s name with them. 


	2. Video Games

the thing about being in an arcade when you’re a kid is that there’s noise, noise, noise—kids lining up—pushing and shoving each other— behind the most popular game, kids plunking their quarters down, kids whooping when they scored big and groaning when their life flashed game over and another player took their seat, time to start the whole thing over again.

dean loved video games. he loved playing them, and he loved waiting his turn in the crowd.

there wasn’t an arcade in every town they stopped by, following scraps of newspaper and weird articles circled in red marker, but when there was, dean found it.

there were even fewer times when he was able to play because when his steps lingered, eyes pin-point bright and squinting from a high noon sun as he stared across the street at the open door, at the kids streaming in and out, dad and sammy gone up ahead, sammy struggling to keep up with dad’s long legged stride, dad would always look back over his shoulder, sharp dog whistle blowing through his lips followed by an impatient, “dean, get your butt over here.”

and dean scurried, only sparing one side-long glance behind him.

they booked their room in the cheapest motel which was also always the seediest motel, the kind with water stains on the walls and the smell of something old in the carpet, lingering ghosts of people before them, people still alive and not dangerous at all, except for the way it made dean’s stomach sour, made him want to soap the whole thing down but there was no time, time to sleep because they had to dig a grave at midnight.

two beds, one for sam and dean, and one for dad. sam had already collapsed on the one bed, sprawled on his belly, reading what looked like a school book because yeah, they were supposed to be in school. 

dad sucking on a beer bottle as he put what was left of the six pack in the ice bucket, already melting despite the swamp cooler chugging damp coolish air into the room.

sweat slid down the hollow of dean’s back as he fiddled with the tv, and he took his plaid shirt off, two sizes too big. there were damp spots on his white tee undershirt, stuck to his flesh like a second skin.

reception’s crap like always and when dean turned to go to bed, catch a few winks before midnight, dad was on the bed, back all the way on the mattress, but legs still hanging off, toes just barely scraping the carpet.

he stuck a leg out, boots crusted in grave dirt and other stuff probably.

"c’mon," he grunted, voice hoarse.

the beer bottle sweat in his hand, and dean sighed as he gripped the heel of the boot, and tugged, tugged, tugged until it wrenched free, and then time to do it to the other one.

dad’s eyes stayed close, even when dean washed his hands under a cold stream of water.

he was about to sleep, but dad called out again. “dean. boy.” he gestured vaguely to the wallet beside the bed. “get something to eat from the gas station.”

dean did, but with the change, he stopped by the arcade and played a video game before coming back, running through his lives quickly because he didn’t get to practice much, but it was fun, and as long as he had a quarter, he could get another one.

only sam was awake when he slipped back, dad drunk sleeping, but he didn’t ask what had taken so long. 

but after—and dean still doesn’t like thinking about it—the video games stopped. he came straight back like dad had always wanted to even if he didn’t say it. 

dad never even seemed to notice. if he was there when he sent dean to get food and he came back in ten minutes, in five minutes, he took the bag dean brought back without saying anything except sometimes something like _what they didn’t have a fresh pot of coffee?_   when he swilled a mouthful of the crap in the styrofoam cup that dean brought, and then maybe his gaze lingered a little longer, head shaking a little bit, before sliding away and finding something else to look at.

if dean and sam were safe and alive when he finished a hunt after a few days, a week, a few weeks, he grunted and told them to wash up and to be ready to get in the damn car when it was time to go and start the whole thing over.

sometimes, dean felt his eyes on him when he was leaned over, tying his boots up, but when he turned back, dad wasn’t looking at him, just at the tv, and dean looked with him until he flipped the channel or turned the whole thing off. sometimes, dad told him his air was growing too long or asked what the hell was that smell was when dean had snuck a squirt of try-me perfume from the drug stores. is this what mom wore, he wanted to ask, but he never did.

dad asked where the bathroom was, and scrubbed dean's hands and wrists till they smelled like alcohol, red-raw burn all over.

but dean kept his eyes down the rare times they passed an arcade, even when his dad wasn’t over his shoulder, in the shadow of his body, in the hollow echo of his boots, dean felt his dad there, especially in the faint shoot em up games that filtered from the inside to their outside ears, in the gunshots that looped in his mind’s eye whether awake or asleep, the one that dad had plugged into the thing that had leaned over sammy, the shots that he should have called out instead--

it was years before dean picked up another video game, not even when he was living with lisa and ben, not even when ben asked him to be player b and dean laughed and said he didn’t play video games.

he didn’t play a video game again until he was thirty-six years old—and dad probably would have said he was too old for video games, wasn’t he, but shit he’d said that when he was a kid and besides he wasn’t around anymore—and he broke into an old arcade he saw while cruising down town, turned the power on, and slid in some coins.

face lit only by the neon lights, eyes coal-black, the screen flashed game over, and every time it did, he pushed new game till the sun came up.


	3. Blue Jeans

His first pair of blue jeans he wore when he was just a kid, back when Mom was still alive. They were powdered white with flour because _pat-a-cake pat-a-cake baker’s man_ even though they had actually been fixing pie, cherry pie with the crust-checkered top. But it wasn’t just his jeans, it was the table and the rolling pin as she rolled the crust smooth and long and oval and then it was his hands too as Mom showed him how to do it right, her big hands guiding his small ones until he was doing it all by himself, and finally, his cheeks from where she cradled his face in her flour crusted palms and told him how proud she was of him, of how good he was at being mommy’s little helper.

He wore blue jeans growing up, too. Men’s jeans even when he was still a boy so that Dad rolled the cuffs up over his kid-sized boots and told him it made him tough, but Dean thought it made him like james dean, which is why he asked Dad if he could wear his leather jacket because they shared a name why couldn’t they dress the same? Laughed in his face for his trouble. 

Older now, but still sitting on motel beds, the kind so ratty you could hear roaches in the walls, the kind where the lights flickered not because of ghosts but because of bad wiring, Dean poked his finger through the holes in his blue jeans, worn so thin at the knees, worn nearly through from crawling across the desert or in the vents of some abandoned building or towards something like forgiveness.

Looked over to the empty bed, wished Sam were here, still, who’d walked out the door without looking back, and Dad too, but they’re gone, gone, gone, each to their lives, and Dad said he’d be back later and he said he’d call but he never did till he was ready to, or until even he knew he was too drunk to get himself home, and so Dean sat alone on the right side of a double bed motel room, in just his boxers because the desert heat had gotten under his skin, nothing in his lap but a worn pair of blue jeans, faded from the wind and too many washings, jeans about as old as him, he thought, rubbing his fingers up the seam, yet softer, somehow, from the wear and tear as life tore at him when he was wearing these jeans, his Dad’s old, washed up jeans, leaving him scarred and calloused on his skin (he traced one of them now, monster bite from a year or two back, still pained him sometimes), but only leaving the shadow of holes velvet thin, just waiting to break, on the knees of his blue jeans.

He threaded the needle, shaking a little because the eye was so small, and smoothed his jeans over his knees. A stitch in time saved nine, his mom had said (he thought), so he sewed slow and careful, made sure the stitching was even as he strengthened the thinning denim with dark blue thread, patched it up good and tight as he waited for someone to remember to call.


	4. Ride

It’s a sweet sixteen summer, and Dean grunts as he repositions himself on the ground, desert sand rubbing his belly raw, where his too small shirt rides up his skin, and he waits, wet and hot, his mouth dried up like the wilderness around him.

Sometimes hunting like this, the lurk and wait as they waited for their prey to show. Dad was sure it was a ghost, and Dad was out there, right now, finding the burial grave, and Dean was watching the camp site the ghost had kept targeting because, despite the danger, the campers were still there, and Dean marveled how people would willingly give up that safe feeling of home as they kept looking, looking over their shoulders, jumping at every bird call.

So while Dad dug up graves, Dean guarded souls, and thought about the words he’d scribbled on the kids menu at Denny’s (because Dad still lied about Sammy’s age) and how he’d written till his fingers were stained blue with ink, writing about being on the road and fixing up the Impala when something inside her broke, the belts splitting a slap in the air like Dad when he smacked his leather belt together, just like Dean was some regular jack kerouac or something (not that he’d ever had a chance to read on the road but he wanted to, someday, because didn’t they live their life on the road).

He wasn’t like other boys, he decided, eyes still narrowing in on the campers below as he leveled the salt loaded gun on their position, though he knew he had to be the son that dad wanted and deserved. Other boys wanted to be astronauts and presidents, but he knew he wasn’t smart enough for that. Had missed too much school. Other boys knew they were boys, didn’t they? But his thoughts shied away and refocused down the barrel of the gun. 

He wondered if Dad would give him the Impala when he was old enough, tough enough like her, when he proved himself worthy. Then he’d get in, he’d drive and drive, settle down in an apartment and work in a car shop because, even though he knew hunting best, he knew cars too.

He signed, shook his head free from the way the sun kept dazzling him and his thoughts, free from the gun-greased, oil-stained, ink-blue hands smudging the cracked, glass panes of his girl-heart.


	5. This is What Makes Us

Dean’s birthday passed unremarked and unnoticed in the smoke of a salt-and-burned grave, and the chink of glass on plastic as Dean threw away the empty, brown bottles of Dad’s cheap beer that he’d drunk before passing out on the one of the motel beds only because Sam was studying on the other. 

When Dad woke up the next night hungover, yelling at Dean, asking why he hadn’t woken him up that morning, they left like they always did, when it was night and the night clerk was busy playing solitaire with a red, rubbed-bare pack of playing cards, corners marked and dimpled, rolling her eyes when she had to check them out because it was the dead of the night when folks should be sleeping.

Stretching his long legs in the back seat of the Impala, Dean wished that they were sleeping at night in a real bed with a soft mattress because he was so tired. He snatched some hours in the car, but then all too soon, Dad had found his next hunt, and they drove and drove over tattered black ribboned highways to another backwater town with a ghost problem.

Dad dropped them off at the school he’d enrolled them both in for the next few weeks, and Dean, fists shoved in the pockets of a ragged hoody, walked with Sam, surly as ever because why even bother, and clapped him on the shoulder as they agreed to meet up later.

Technically, Dean was still a senior in high school, or he would have been if they lived normal lives, and his Dad had signed him up for it, after weighing the pros and cons of the hunt, whether it was something he could handle himself or if he’d need Dean for backup, but Dean guessed it was a solo job because he’d been signed up for classes and, judging from the way that school was ringing the tardy bell, he should be sliding in his seat to be bored to death by high school english, but instead he was just cruising his way to what served as the downtown, hands in his jean pockets.

And that’s when he saw her, summer dress slipping crooked down her brown shoulders, bare feet getting dusty from the pavement, her vintage coca-cola red polish chipped on her toes and her fingers because her strappy heels were slung over her wrist, body jumping when someone blew a horn as they drove on by, laughter faint over the motor.

But then she saw him, saw Dean, walking towards her, and she passed her fingers under her eyes, looking at her fingertips, and Dean saw the smudged remains of her liner, the light mascara clinging to her lashes as they passed, her body rigid as they began to pass, and Dean, ears still ringing from the blast of the horn, asked, “Hey, are you okay?”

A brief hesitation before a smile appeared. “I’m fine.”

Then they were passed each other, Dean looking over his shoulder as her body swayed in the wind.

When bored and unable to find the give away sign of Dad’s sleek impala anywhere, Dean returned to school sometime after lunch, and found the room for geometry, where the girl with the blue sundress sat in the back beside the only empty chair, and he slid into it, realizing he didn’t have pencil or paper or books, and the familiar heat rushing up his neck, shading his cheeks, so he ducked his head low, hoped the teacher wouldn’t see, wouldn’t call attention.

During roll call, he learned that the girl in the summer dress and the strappy heels, now back on her feet, was Rhonda Hurley.

When he answered to Dean Winchester, he found Rhonda’s brown eyes on him. “Hey,” he said again. “You don’t happen to have a spare pencil? And paper?”

She rolled her eyes then, but she gave him two sheets of her own paper torn softly from its spiral binder, and a worn down yellow number two pencil. He nodded his thanks because the teacher had turned back to face her classroom, and Dean learned that she licked her teeth before she had to glance down at her textbook to make sure she was teaching it right, that she edged her way around the blonde jock in the football jacket in the first row, her fingers pinching the edges of his test, her body held back from him even as she returned it to him, who took it back only lazily and reluctantly, that she glanced up at the clock on the far wall as often as her students, and that after the third question, a grate came into her voice, a tension straining it, winding it tighter and tighter—she probably went home to a beer, or maybe something fancier like red wine, something Dean himself had only tasted once (but had enjoyed).

Dean frowned and doodled in the margins. If Dad let him help, they could finish the job faster, and get out of this pit stop of a town.

The bell rang, and it was over, it was time to go, and he held the pencil back to Rhonda. “Where’s your next class?” he said.

“I’m going home,” Rhonda said, shouldering her bag as she took the pencil from him and tucked it inside.

“Can I walk you?” Dean said, the words coming quick before he could think about saying something else, something that would make more sense like see you later.

Her eyes narrowed, sizing him up. Maybe comparing him to the blonde jock that’d already left, his voice still loud in the halls.  Then she shrugged, shaking the sweeping curl of her black hair curled up like those pin up girls in Bobby’s journals, lips just as red too.

“Sure, whatever,” she said.

But when he offered her his arm, she took it.

She didn’t live far, and they paused outside her yard. It was small, more weeds than grass. Her hand lingered on the chain link fence, crumpled in on the side, like a car had wrecked it, and nobody had bothered to fix it.

It could have been his dad in their impala, for all Dean knew. Or someone just like him. Someone working hard, drinking on the job because no home to go back to, no wife, just a train-wrecked life, and his throat went dry, his hands sweating as he stuffed them once more in his pockets as they lingered, saying goodbye, see you later, tomorrow, then? in every way they knew how.

“Where do you live?” she finally said.

“We don’t live here,” Dean said. “We’re just staying here. On business. My dad’s on business. Not sure when he’ll be done.”

Her face brightened. “You’re at the hotel? The one with the pool?”

He looked at her legs—curved and wide at the thigh. The soft lines of her shoulders and back. Sweat shimmered along her neck. He’d invite her over to the pool—if they had one. They could cannon-ball in the deep end, splash each other till they laughed, kiss in the water, lips tasting of chlorine.

He pulled his face up, then ducked it low with his hand rubbing the nape of his neck. Tried not to sound like a jerk. “Yeah, maybe.”

But then maybe she noticed the tattered holes in his jeans, his shoes held together by duct tape. “You know what my girlfriends used to do,” she said. “They’d climb the fence in their black bikinis and play in the pool until security called the cops on them, and they’d run, the water shining in the moonlight, leading the cops on a merry chase of catch me if you can, like they were willow-the-wisps, because even if they did get caught, they were never in any real trouble.”

Dean flinched, his fingers absently rubbing his wrists where silver cuffs had been cinched too tight around them that one time. Dad’s voice on the other end of the phone telling the arresting officer to let him rot in jail. “My dad’d tan my hide if I ever played a game like that.”

She blinked her eyes at him, her arm leaning against the dirty silver of the chain link fence. “So would mine.”

Dean would bring her to the swimming pool if he could. They’d float on their backs, just the sun shining down on them, freckling their skin, nothing but the water washing across their bodies like shore lines, pulling them out to tide. His stomach twisted, nausea seizing him, and he had to turn away, breathe deep to clear his head. “See you tomorrow?” he said.

“Well, it is a school day.”

“Unless we play hookie,” Dean said, winking.

“And risk the wrath of our parents?”

He wanted to tell her that his dad wouldn’t care and his mom was dead and he can’t let himself think about whether she’d care or not, but he couldn’t say anything like that, so he just laughed to fill the empty place before saying, “See you later, Rhonda,” and swinging along home in the direction of the motel with its dirty carpet and water-stained wall and the stale smell of soap.

Sam was already home, doing his homework like a good kid, so Dean sprawled on one of the beds, hand splayed over his tummy, under his shirt, and he let his eyes close. If he breathed shallow, he could still smell her jasmine-y perfume, probably something from the dime-store drug stores, because he’d pressed their little spray tops in the air, not on his wrist so it wouldn’t linger around him in a clinging, cloying cloud that dad would sniff out.

Maybe they could go to the store tomorrow. Maybe they could fill the air with chemical flowers until the sales reps told them to buy something or to move on. He plunged his hands into his pockets, fingered out the two dollar bills that dad had left for them.

Enough to buy several packages of ramen since they’d be out of the food dad left them soon.

Maybe dad would come back, maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he could spend those two dollars on ice cream cones for him and Rhonda.

He pocketed them again. Better save it.

“Dean—” Sam’s voice came from a great distance, and Dean opened his eyes with reluctance. “Don’t you have homework?”

Dean shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Why aren’t you doing it,” he said anxiously.

Dean rolled away from Sam, towards the hot shaft of light coming through the dirty windows. “It’s not like I’m going to college, Sam.” He’d done the math. Technically he shouldn’t even be in high school anymore, but hey, he was so behind. Missed too many days. Failed too many tests.

“C’mon, Dean. Don’t be a jerk.”

“Why don’t you finish your homework,” Dean said sleepily. “So that you’ll be happy, and your teachers will be happy, and Dad’ll be happy, and we’ll all be happy?”

Sam stood back, his arms folded tight across his chest, lips pinched together. “You met a girl, didn’t you?”

“Lots of girls at school,” Dean said, “since it’s not like we’re fancy enough for private boys only schools.”

“I don’t mean like that, I mean like you met someone, and you’re thinking about ways to show her a good time,” Sam said petulantly. “A girl isn’t more important than school, Dean.” He shuffled back to his school work. “You shouldn’t let her distract you.”

“I’m not letting her distract me, Sam,” Dean said. “Sound’s like she’s distracting you more’n me and you don’t even know who she is.”

Sam pinched his lips into that face, the one that disapproved so sharply, and turned just as sharp back to his homework. Dean listened to the scratch of his pencil for a few minutes before putting the headphones of his walkman over his ears, and falling asleep listening to joan jett.

Dean walked Rhonda home after class every day for the next two weeks, and it was a nice enough time to look forward to, it was enough to keep him coming back even though there wasn’t much point to it.

But then one day she wasn’t there, and he didn’t see her again until he was walking home, wondering if he should bother checking with the receptionist to see if Dad had decided to call that day, and he saw her leaning against the wall of the local dive bar, a smoking cigarette between her fingers, and a trembling pile of ash as the fire smoldered its way through the thin paper.

He swerved towards her, leaned against the same wall with her, head lifted up, brick scraping against the tender skin of his scalp.

“What do you want,” she said.

“I don’t know,” he said.

She gave the cigarette to Dean, and he flicked the pillar of ash to the ground, took a drag where she’d rimmed the white pink with her lipstick. “Thanks.”

“I better go before my dad gives me a hard time,” she said, shoving off the wall. “He hates it when I’m late.”

“He do that a lot?” Dean asked, handing the cigarette back to her.

“Only every day,” she said. “What about yours?”

“Well, you know, he used to be in the military so.”

“Yeah, mine too. Sometimes I think, hey he thinks he might still be there but I can’t be his soldier. He’s not my commanding officer even if he acts like it. He’s supposed to my dad.”

Dean swallowed around the lump in his throat. “That’s rough, Rhonda.”

“I just hate him sometimes, then I feel bad for hating him, because he’s still my dad. He reminds me that he is, all the time. I take care of you, I put a roof over your head, I make sure you get schooling. I should be grateful. I am, I am really.”

But there were tears in her eyes, and Dean handed her a wrinkled strip of napkin he’d put in his pocket after they ate the special at the mom ‘n’ pop diner down the street.

“Thanks,” she said. “You don’t seem like other boys.”

“That’s probably because I’m not a boy.” It slipped out, and Dean buttoned his lips up tight, before thinking maybe he should correct himself but how? Take backs were never for reals. He scrubbed his hand over his jaw. Then remembered they would be leaving soon if this all turned to shit.

“I was going to say it’s because you’re so nice.”

“I like to think I’m nice,” Dean said. He winked at her. “Lots of people think I’m nice too, not to brag.” But also kind of to brag.

“Hmm,” she said. “Well, I guess that remains to be seen. You haven’t even offered to walk me home yet.”

“My lady,” Dean said, offering her his arm. And she took it, her nails painted delicate petal pink, and he stared at each deliberate brush stroke, and at the pink in her lips and her cheeks and the pink of her stockings with the run in the back of the knee.

“You like?” she said. “Do you like pink?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You look darling in pink.”

She kept her eyes straight ahead, wind playing with the pink ribbon tying up her dark hair, undoing the bow and making it messy. “I think you’d look darling in pink too.”

Dean licked his lips. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You know. Dad probably won’t be home for a bit, he always stays out late on a Friday. You could come in. If you wanted to.” They walked in silence, and Dean listened to the heart beat of her strappy heels clipping against the sidewalk. “Should I call you Dean, still?” she asked, without looking at him.

He looked at her, sideways and under his lashes. “You can call me whatever you want.” He nudged her gently with his elbow. “Just don’t make me cry.” And he winked at her, even though sometimes, it might be nice to cry without Dad telling him to be strong, to just man up, and how was he supposed to do that? Why should he do that? But he did because he had to be strong and brave, strong and brave for Dad and for Sam, because Mom had been strong and brave too, and he knew that’s what she wanted him to be, and he knew this because Dad had told him so.

“I would never,” she said. “That’s what boys do, and don’t you just hate it when they do?”

Dean looked at her, words caught on his tongue like they were stuck, like they didn’t know how to shape themselves up into something, and so he just walked in step with her, and she lead him down the splintered concrete path to her house, jimmying the lock because it sounded rusted, and pushing through the squeaking door.

She showed him her room, the one that was messy on the floor, but with the clean drawers, makeup arranged with the blushes and the pinks and the blues and the purples each in their rows. How her jeans were rumpled in the drawer, but how her summer dresses hung straight from their hangers. There were photos on the walls, photos of her and her mom, a little darker than her, and her father, he figured. They weren’t smiling, exactly, but he saw her on the porch of this house when she was six, and again when she was wearing junior green, prepped for selling girl scouts cookies, and again when, standing beside her beaming mother (but not her father), she was dressed fancy in pink, and all these sharing the same backdrop of the same porch, even if a little older, a little in need of a coat of paint, for a school dance, homecoming or prom or something he didn’t know and she didn’t offer an explanation, perhaps because she thought he’d know.

“What about your mom,” Dean said, looking at one where they were holding each other.

“Mama works very hard,” Rhonda said. “She’s visiting her family though. She’ll be back in a few days. I always miss her when she’s gone. It’s easier, when she’s here.”

“I can imagine,” Dean said, in a whisper.

“Do you have anything of your mother’s?” Rhonda said. “That’s why I wear so many dresses when she’s gone, because they used to be hers when she was a girl, and I love them.”

His voice came out thick, but he pushed the words through. “No. Everything got destroyed in a fire. I just—I have.” And he pulled out his wallet, and showed her the black and white photograph of Mary he kept there, the one he’d taken from Dad when he was drunk, the one he hadn’t noticed was gone yet.  

“She’s beautiful,” Rhonda said.

He put the photo away. She sat on the bad, and he sat beside her. “Did you want to see my pink things?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said.

She went to her dresser, pulled out a ribbon of pink that looked grand against her dark hair. “Do you want to try?” she said, tugging the knot undone.

“I don’t think my hair’s long enough,” he said.

“There are other places to tie a ribbon,” she said, words more breath than voice. She walked towards him slow, twining the ribbon around her fingers until she stood in front of him, and then she lifted her hands so that the ribbon was stretched taut between her fingers, and she lowered the ribbon behind him, so that it slid smooth and pink against his skin, against the nape of his neck, and she could, she could tie it into a bow, right there over his adam’s apple, and he swallowed the thought down hard.

“What do you think?” she said.

“I think—are you gonna tie it off or what?”

She smiled down at him, then tied the knot hard against his throat, a comfortable pressure that made him aware of every breath. “Too tight?” she asked.

He shook his head.  “Just right,” he said.

“I have so many pink things,” she said. “I have—” but before she could list them, and god did Dean want to know what they were, an engine, hard and loud, rumbled into the driveway, and she swore softly. “It’s Dad,” she said, and his fingers were at the ribbon at his throat, scrabbling away at it like a scabbed over secret. “You have to go,” she said, “if he saw you here, he’d—”

Yeah he knew, he understood, because their dads were kind of the same, weren’t they? And he leaned out the window, the window that looked out over the back hard, the one that was high, but nothing a drop and roll wouldn’t be able to handle with just a banged up knee to show for it. But as he wrenched the window open, she caught his hand, thrust something soft and satiny in his palm, and she said, “Keep this. Tell me what you think tomorrow, okay?”

And he thrust the scrap of fabric into his pocket, and dropped from the sill, wiping the dirt from his jeans as he stood to his feet, and swung himself over the fence, turning back to say one goodbye, but she wasn’t at the window, and that was okay, it totally was, because he could see her tomorrow, at school, and he was sure she’d come.

He came home to Dad, prowling the floor, wondering where he was when school was supposed to have been over an hour ago, why wasn’t here, why hadn’t he come home with Sammy, and Dean said nothing but yes sir, and I’m sorry sir while Sam tried to say that he was old enough to be by himself now, and nothing mattered because the ghost was gone and it was time to pack it up and move it along again, and they were on the road with Dean’s head still spinning, and his head craning back to look out the rear view window, and he knew he was never coming back, and something squeezed his chest, his neck, his throat, while the pressure in his pocket, full with Rhonda’s last gift, pushed against his thigh until Dad’s voice snapped out, “Eyes front and center, Dean,” and so he did, and saw nothing but road.


	6. Singing Your Song

Look at Mom’s picture, first in Dean’s wallet, now at his bedside, pretty in black and white, and a half curved smile on her lips.

He closed his eyes.

He couldn’t tell Sam this—Sam would repeat his words like a skipped record: move on, mom's dead and there's no coming back. But Dean, desperate as he hunched over his knees, slippered feet still cold against the concrete floor, knew otherwise, because he was here right now, skin chilled like hell. Yet could he do to her what'd been done to him--could he?

It scared Dean that sometimes it was like all his memories of Mom were frozen in snap shot, sun faded polaroid.  

He had lived a long time, and she had died when he was young, and he was forgetting her.

He folded his hands together, curled the knuckles against each other into soft fists. He didn’t know where she was—didn’t know if the her he saw in heaven was really her or Zachariah’s cruel illusion. He hoped her heaven, if she were there, was no torment.

He had not seen her in hell, and something that felt like relief but also wasn’t spread over his skin, as he collapsed onto his side, knees tucked up against his stomach. 

And she had not been in purgatory—even though she had once been a ghost.

Where else was there to go after you died?

His eyes grew heavy and glassy with tears he wiped impatiently away—embarrassed. What if she wasn't there on whatever side he found himself after he died—but then, his face twisted, that would probably be for the best.

She deserved peace, someplace good without hurt and shame and guilt.

How many more times would he die, would someone put him down and another someone drag him back? If he could just—

he pulled the covers up around him because if he could just lay here, sleeping until he died without being called on to be another dead-eye dick or someone else’s scapegoat to carry their sins into the desert for another forty years, that would be a paradise in and of itself.

His stomach hurt with hunger, and, eyes falling on his mother’s portrait, he missed the PB and J sandwiches with the cut off crusts she’d made for him, or the way she’d curl her knuckles against his hot skin checking for fever. The way she kissed the bruises on his knees, there there all better—

But he knew that his mother would want him to be brave, and so he would, and he would get up in half an hour and brew some coffee and look for another hunt while seeing his mother’s face all the while, wishing that he could hear her say, just one more time, that everything was fine, and that it’d be true.


	7. Bought Your Bullshit All Before

The very worst thing is that even if they do kill Abaddon, it won’t make a goddamn bit of difference because tomorrow there will just be another bad son of a bitch they gotta kill, something bigger and badder and eviler than the one that came before it.

Another one that’ll ask him to lay himself down like Abraham’s own son, throat bared, to bleed and bleed till it killed him dead (but not really) because —

He never asked for this, he never asked to be somebody’s big damn hero, but that’s a bullshit excuse and he knew it because Dad had drilled it into him often enough, knew that knowing he never asked for it wasn’t a good enough reason to turn his back on a whole bunch of people and their kids and their lives but goddamnit—

Just once, he wished that he could scream at the moon stop fucking stop and someone would fucking listen and stop.

Stop touching him, stop pushing him around, stop, just stop, stop it all.

Shut the fuck up with your big boy plans he never cared, never gave a shit, but he’ll do what he has to do because he needs to be brave (and what was bravery, Mom had said, not the absence of fear—but accepting your fear) and he’s already sold his soul and there’s nothing else to lose but the souls of the people around him  a big blue world meant for everyone but him and that’s okay he learned his lessen in hell and in heaven and in purgatory because, irony of ironies (but he won’t laugh, he won’t appreciate), he can come back from the dead again and again but only to save the world one more time for everybody else.

But that didn’t make it right.

He remembered the guilt that used to come from thinking such things, but it’s not so sharp anymore—possibly because there was already so much guilt inside, it was all the same, sharp edges blunting each other up into dull pressing aches.

In his dreams, he saw his old man. Let’s be heroes, son. Let’s get vengeance—because it’s the right thing to do. Isn’t that right boy, heavy hand on his shoulder, heavy hand on his head, ruffling up his long hair (hey, looks like you need a haircut, next thing Dean knew, he was sitting in the barber chair when he thought they were gonna crash at the hotel but that came later, after his hair was soldier short because the barber listened to dad say cut it and not to the way Dean shook his head).

Killing yellow eyes didn’t change a damn thing, and Dad had said it would.

Fathers and gods saying they’ve got a plan, and it’s a good one too, they swear and swear—hey, listen

as they get their angels to lean lean in close, so close their grace germs up the goddamn place.

This is how it’ll go, they said, and, you gotta trust us, they said, but damned if he could ever remember if they said why, and to this day, there’s still no good reason to trust any of these assholes who just want to use him like they want to use the world because they never asked and nobody asked them so why the fuck are these guys still even here with their stacked deck of cards?

Do us all a favor, and shut up.

Wasn’t there anyone where a quiet drink could just be that? A quiet drink and nothing else? Why wasn’t there a goddamn soul who didn’t want to take a little something he’d hidden in his heart?

Just let it be, he sang with his mother’s voice, and wished—

He fell into his memory foam mattress, let his eyes fall half closed and half veiled, nothing in the room but him with high walls all around and the beating sound of his own heart scudding against his rib cage.

Would be complete and utter silence but too much to ask for since Sam kept tramping around, probably looking for him, wondering why he still wasn’t looking for that Abaddon killer queen, so Dean pulled a pillow over his head, mouth open so he could breathe until the wet spot got too cold, and then he turned over in on himself, holding his knees close to his stomach, boots heavy on his feet, mark of cain a burning brand a constant reminder of just exactly what he was good for, and it was funny thinking about how he was still fucked and how even off the grid it’s still the same shit different day and it’s like where to go if not earth and not heaven and not purgatory was far enough away to take him from these ghosts haunting him day and night even though there’s no body to burn but they linger still, defying every law and every rule and it’s useless to shout, move on move on move on, find some other patsy some other scapegoat some other warrior some other hero some other named champion sword glowing blue when orcs drew near because Dean? After this last one, he’s done, please don’t drag him back for another round of apocalypse now, don’t burn, don’t touch—

Breath went ragged in a throat gone dry and parched, entire body a wilderness that he’s wandered in for forty days and forty nights. Even though he’s got no throne got no home got no bread, guilt settled in heavy, knowing he never did pass the devil’s test—but, stop, please—

Dean hovered in that place between sleep and wakefulness, heart and breath ping-ponging passed each other like a fixed game, blood ratcheting up his arm, burning hot and cold around the mark, and Dean squeezed his eyes shut don’t be scared but he was because, and he hugged himself tight, even though he knew he couldn’t trust his arms, couldn’t trust this cage of bones and skin because—“Shut up,” he pleaded with himself, voice high and sharp to the ceiling.

Then Sam’s boots echoing down the halls as he came in, sticking his long nose into his business, meaning well probably maybe Dean didn’t know anymore everything was shit, and he poked his head into Dean’s room without knocking. “Everything okay down here, Dean?” lips pinched up around his teeth like that would make him something swell.

"Yeah everything’s fine Sam," Dean heard himself say by rote like a litany.

"Then let’s get back to work," Sam said.

Get back to work, get back to work, get back to work, shut up old man. Dean didn’t move.

Sam lingered, hesitant. “You sure you’re alright?”

So Dean threw his legs over the bed, muscles coiled and tensed and ready to rise or spring or fight or run and run without once looking back. “Yeah. I’m just a little tired.”

"Then I’ll brew some coffee," Sam said, like that would make everything alright.


	8. Born to Die

With each passing birthday, Dean woke mildly surprised. He hadn’t expected to make it this far, this old. Hunters who were in the game for as long as he had been didn’t wake up on the far side of thirty, still kicking, still fighting the good fight.

Technically of course, he hadn’t made it this far without dying. Had died more times than he could count, or even remember. Had gone to hell, and his brain carefully shifted images, not so neatly sidestepping the memories, returning to a refrain of Hey Jude like he taught himself to when his thoughts turned there, but his thoughts still turned to heaven and purgatory even though he hummed don’t carry the world on your shoulders, hey jude

Dean Winchester, archtypal hero coming back from the lands of the dead alive and—well, just alive. 

He shook his head, flexing his muscles till his veins pressed up in a thick blue line against his skin, words like Daddy’s blunt little instrument whispering in his ear. 

He cradled his throbbing head into his hand, Cain’s mark scarred and close, so he twitched his sleeve to cover it.

That would be a change, he supposed. After dying so many times, after being God’s lamb, would the mark protect him from another death? 

He closed his eyes, focusing on the leftover coffee from the corner gas station—the stale smell of it, the way the hazelnut cream scummed his tongue and teeth. Then he drank its dregs down in a single swallow, ground scraping against his throat, and he told himself, no more. no more of that.

He grabbed his coat and took a walk on this Friday night, on his birthday. Walked in the area that comprised the downtown, lit with pale yellow lights that seemed to lead the way to the single bar in town called Shenanigans, clover themed green, bright and loud. He didn’t go in because he knew he would drink too much, so he found a diner instead, just a regular Denny’s in familiar yellow, and the waitress said they had coffee just fresh brewed, and wow, how could he say no to that.

He ordered cherry pie too, then remembered how he’d tied knots with maraschino cherry stems with his tongue that one time, and flushed pink.

Waiting for his coffee and his pie, he missed the bed in the motel, and the darkness, the way he could hug the blankets to him close, and sleep with his clothes on, weight of them and the blankets crushing him softly, without pain.

He refocused on the Denny’s, on the chatter of the cooks, the way the plates clattered, and sometimes shattered, looked forward to that cherry pie, how pinkly-red it’d be, how the crust would crumble in his mouth like sweet kisses.

The coffee came first, and when the waitress brought the pie, she said, “Celebrating anything special?”

"Just my birthday," Dean said, winking out of habit.

And she clapped her hands like they were at a real party. “How old are you?”

"Twenty-nine," Dean said even though he wasn’t, not anywhere close to that even if you shaved off the forty years of exile in hell, the first place he’d gone to the first time he’d died for real because it’d been the right thing to do, he was sure, he thought, sometimes. 

"Well happy birthday then," she said. "I’m just sorry to see you’re spending it alone. You got a party to go to later?"

He looked up at her over the lip of his coffee cup, smiling around it. “C’mon now, don’t make me sad.”

And she laughed because the smile said it was okay for her to laugh, he wasn’t serious—he was just fooling and when she left, Dean’s smile left with her.

The weather turned bad as the evening grew longer, and, sucking cherry syrup from his teeth, dean walked back to the motel room under the pouring rain.


	9. You, Me, We All Like Dean

"Dean," John said as he helped hold the gun steady in his boy’s arms, and it reminded him of the time his own father had held him steady as he learned to bicycle on two wheels. "Dean," he said again, tongue heavy with his liquor breath. "Squeeze the trigger, like so," and he covered his boy’s hands with his own, trigger finger bearing down on trigger finger, and his body shuddered under the shout of the bullet in his ears and in his bones, and he knew Dean heard it too, felt it in their skins like lightning before the thunder. 

~*~

Sam heard the words leave Dean’s lips, the “You don’t want to end up like me” falling on Sam’s ears as Dean himself fell onto the bed, too small shirt riding up his stomach, the perfect bad boy example with his bad grades and his bad attitude, the way his mouth broke into shards as he called out, see you later, to the boys and girls that clustered after him as they left school and headed for the motel called home. “Not that you could,” Dean added, “since I’m cool like batman’s cool and you’re not.”

"Shut up, Dean," Sam said. He hated when Dean talked this way, the way where he wouldn’t look at him, arm flung over his eyes, face serene and broken into planes of stubbled skin, his mouth soft and smiling. 

~*~

Lisa heard Dean at night tinkering on the Impala when she went to bed, and she heard him drinking from a beer with his oil stained hands when she got up. She asked, “Did you stay up all night, Dean?” He brought her closed, kissed her temple, there, but his eyes wandered to the front window, to the yard with the too long grass, the foxtails feathering in the slight breeze.

"Hey," he said, voice cracking through his chapped lips. "Did you want me to mow the lawn?"

She shrugged, and he slipped from her. He went to the garage, powered up the mower, and pushed it over the grass, struggling with the turns at the end of the row like he’d never mown a lawn before. It was easy to forget, his face flushed and cute in the hot sun, that those hands had mown down other things besides overgrown lawns. 

She went to the kitchen, and made him a cold glass of lemonade, wedge of lemon floating in the ice.

~*~

"Dean, Dean," Michael whispered. "C’mon, Dean." Dean’s ears, not keen enough to hear angelic whispers, did not blush with faked modesty. Wretchedly, Michael stared at him, every single one of his all consuming eyes, stared at Dean, pleaded with Dean. 

Any other would have said yes already. 

Michael watched Dean. He knew that the fallow field in the pit of Dean’s stomach was not actual grief—

But it was nice to pretend that it was, that their separation charred them both like a tree split by lightning.

~*~

The monsters, many of them sent to purgatory by Dean himself, found themselves hunting the one who’d hunted them—even now in death. It wouldn’t be like last time, they said to themselves—bitter and overcome with hunger for blood and a face they could chew. 

After all, what was a monster without a human? They needed him and maybe he needed them or why else would he have come to this land where they were purely monster and he was purely human and, as they fled, gasping and watering the desolation of purgatory as they cast their eyes over their shoulders, as they wondered to see his face one last time before he felled them with a final strike—would they be reborn? Would they truly die without him to bring them back again?

~*~

"Oh, Dean," Death said, thin lips sipping cherry cola. "Did you really think your offering of fast food and fried vegetables and carbonated beverages would placate me so much I’d grant you another favor?"

Dean shrugged.

And Death listened.


End file.
